The Lightkeeper's Wife - By Karen Viggers Page 0,96
two dark periods in between, one short, one long. That’s how sailors could tell their position, by the character of the flashes from each lighthouse.
‘We lived in a red-roofed brick cottage below the lighthouse. To get up to the tower, you had to climb the concrete path. The weather was often terrible—so much wind. You could feel it through your clothes and aching in your ears. As you climbed the hill, you could see crumbling cliffs around the edges of the cape. And way out was the shifting face of the ocean, always heaving up and down. Below our cottage was a lovely stretch of sand called Lighthouse Beach. And to the west, you’d see all the jagged shadows of Recherche Bay.’
Mary noticed most of them were only half listening and she wondered how she could draw them in. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said, and they obeyed. ‘Imagine you’re standing on the cliffs near the light tower, looking south. You have to think south. And you have to take your mind out over the water and ride the waves as far as they go until you reach the ice. That’s where the wind is born, and by the time it reaches Cape Bruny, it’s still carrying Antarctica on its breath.
‘Now turn around and walk to the door at the bottom of the tower. It’s black and heavy, hard to open. You have to undo the lock and swing the door inwards. Then you step inside out of the wind. You can feel the stillness of the tower. And then you can hear the clank of your boots on the iron steps as you climb. When you speak your voice bounces around the walls.
‘Now you’re in the lantern room. There’s a huge lens almost filling the room. It’s domed like a beehive out of Winnie the Pooh. Prisms and faces of glass, all yellow with age. Imagine you’re looking out through the windows. Way down below, the sea is foaming over the rocks around Courts Island. But the sound of the waves is dull because of the stone walls of the tower. And the wind is echoing. You’re gloriously high. The view is wide. The ocean is rippling far to the south.’
She paused. ‘You can open your eyes now.’
The boys’ eyes flashed open. There was some squirming and giggling.
‘Now we’ll go back down to the keeper’s cottage,’ she said, trying to regain their attention. ‘It wasn’t very fancy back then—just bare walls and high ceilings. No posters or paintings or anything like that. There’s a black kettle always hissing and simmering on the stove. And on the table there are pencils and paper. That’s where my children did their lessons. They’re all grown up now. But when they were younger they had maths and grammar to learn just like you. I had to be their teacher. They didn’t always like that.’
Some of the boys laughed.
‘And what do you think we did on bad days?’ she asked them.
‘Watch TV?’ one of them said.
Mary shook her head. ‘No. TV was only just coming in back then, and reception was poor out at the light station.’
‘So what did you do?’ Leon prompted her.
‘Well, sometimes the wind was so strong you couldn’t go out or you’d get blown over. So we used to do inside things. Like make pom-poms. Or draw pirate maps. Write letters and poke them into bottles to send out to sea. If the weather was good, we were outside flying kites, making bonfires, jumping over waves.
‘Our beach was good for fossicking and we collected all sorts of things: shells and stones, feathers, lots of beach junk, like broken buoys and penguin skulls and old rusty knives. My children used to make things from sticks too: spears, bows and arrows, skis and poles. Sometimes, on a really good day, we’d go up past the tower and down the path on the other side. If the tide was low, we could go across the stony walkway to Courts Island. In among the grass, there were mutton-bird burrows, and at the right time of year, we’d pull out fluffy chicks with black shiny eyes.’
She stopped, drained of energy, and the children stared up at her, their imaginations fired, and shot out questions. Had she ever seen pirates? Could the wind really blow you off your feet? Did she see any wrecks? What happened when there was lightning? Was there treasure on Courts Island? Could kids go up the tower?